Tom Holland and Dominic Sandford, on their excellent podcast ‘The rest is history’, recently featured a series on the subject of Peter the Great and the Great Northern War.
I have not yet had time to listen to the whole narrative, but I much enjoyed the first episode which told the story of Peter’s early years and the upheavals of his childhood.
The picture above shows some members of the Streltsy, a corps of soldiers formed in the 16th Century by Ivan lV (a.k.a. Ivan the Terrible), as his personal bodyguard. Their name derives from the Russian verb ‘strelat’, which means ‘to shoot’. As can be seen; not only were they very brightly dressed, they were also armed to the teeth with a variety of weaponry. A potent force in battle at times of war the Streltsy were generally faithful and effective servants of the Tsar. However, in times of relative peace they had a tendency to get bored and become involved in trouble.
The Streltsy loomed large in Peter’s life. He became Tsar of Russia in 1782 when only 10 years old, reigning as joint ruler with his elder brother Ivan, who was disabled. His mother was appointed regent, but this situation was soon challenged by Peter’s sister, Sophia, who seized the throne with the Streltsy’s help. The bloodshed witnessed by young Peter was horrible and Peter developed an aversion to the gloomy labyrinth of the Kremlin palace, where the atrocities took place, and to Moscow as a whole.
The tables were turned when Peter, aged 17, deposed his sister, in part with the assistance of the ever restive Streltsy, and in part by deploying his own ‘play’ regiments that Sophia had carelessly allowed him to equip and drill outside Moscow.
It is believed that Peter’s violent and unsettled childhood was a contributory factor to his decision to move his capital from Moscow to fortifications on the Baltic Sea, built on land taken from the Swedes which he named Saint Petersburg.
The illustration above is one of the illustrations from my talk, ‘The Bronze Horseman’, which tells the story of Saint Petersburg through references to the giant statue of Peter the Great that still graces Senate Square today, and also Alexnder Pushkin’s poem of the same name.